
Gass. 
Book. 






Lincoln's Message 

to the Twentieth Century 



AN ADDRESS 
by Eugene 3%: Hay 



Delivered before the Hennepin Republican 
Association at tKe "West Hotel, Minneapolis, 
February 12tH, 1902 J& & & & 




Lincoln's Message 

to the Twentieth Century 



AN ADDRESS 
by Eugene £f: Hay 



Delivered before tKe Hennepin Republican 
.Association at tKe A^est Hotel, Minneapolis, 
February 12tK, 1902 j& J& J& J& 






^ m 



1 






Lincoln's Message to tHe TwentietH 
Century. 

Ninety-three years ago to-day, a child was born to an humble 
pioneer in the backwoods of Hardin County, Kentucky. Fifty- 
seven years later, and just thirty-six years ago to-day, George 
Bancroft, standing in the National House of Representatives be- 
fore the uncrowned rulers of a free people, delivered the nation's 
eulogy upon one of freedom's martyrs, in a voice the sad cadence 
of which found a responsive echo in every clime and hamlet where 
the votaries of liberty dwelt. In the period intervening between 
these two events, the life and labors of Abraham Lincoln sent 
thundering down the ages a message to all the centuries yet to 
come. 

C Withered to-night, in the early morn of a new century, to cel- 
ebrate the birthday of this martyr patriot, may we not, as citizens 
of the country he loved, as members of the great political party 
he founded, seek in his life for a correct understanding of his 
message to us ? 

In the economy of nature there is neither waste nor accident. 
The product of to-day bears a logical relation to the forces of 
yesterday. In the great work of nation-building, where man 
reigns, the hand of God is ever visible in his labors. The mighty 
men who, in critical times have appeared to lead man upward and 
onward in his ever ceaseless march, are not the accidents of the 
day, but the product of the wisdom of the past. All time is oper- 
ated by the immutable providences of eternity. Nations and 
men, in the grand procession which history marshals before us, 
came, flourished and disappeared as the result of a cause going 
before. Neither the American republic nor him who, at the 
meridian of its first century typified its basic principle, were the 
result of chance. 



Like the great Hebrew commonwealth which was organized 
on Mount Sinai, the American Republic sprang into existence at 
a given. time with a fundamental law, which defined the rights, 
liberties and powers of those who composed it. The great genius 
who organized and established the Hebrew commonwealth was 
inspired of God, and it may be said of that government that it is 
the storehouse of wisdom to which all nations have gone. The 
American Republic was born of the union of wisdom and con- 
science out of the travail of the ages, and the thought which is 
central in our existence as a people is the best product of all the 
centuries and all the nations of the past. Like every political 
thought, ancient or modern, it had its origin in the Hebrew 
commonwealth ; it was nurtured and developed by Athens and 
Rome and Sparta, but its first grand inspiration was that which 
went from Galilee out among the children of men. It lived 
through the black despair of the Middle Ages, and had a new 
birth in the Renaissance; it illumined the horizon of the Dutch 
Republic, and found clear voice in John Knox's defiance of Mary 
Stuart; it was carried from the lowlands of Scotland to the pro- 
vince of Ulster, brought by the hardy Ulstermen across the At- 
lantic and cradled in the valleys of the Appalachian range; 
while Jefferson's pen and the votes of the Continental Congress 
gave it concrete and enduring expression. 

The diligence of the historian has discovered but little reliable 
data as to the ancestry of Abraham Lincoln. As to the child, we 
may be certain only of the place of his birth, and that his family 
probably came from Virginia to Kentucky. But of that sublime 
figure who, from 1858 to 1865 carried in the hollow of his hand 
the destinies of free institutions and saved to posterity the prom- 
ises of the Declaration of Independence, we know from whence 
he came. The struggles of man for liberty through all the ages. 
the ripest wisdom and purest morals of all time could alone have 
produced him. 

Three simple statements serve as an analysis of the character 
of this remarkable man : 

He was immovable in his adherence to the right. 

He sought a moral principle upon which to base every action 
of his life. 



The promotion of human liberty and the fulfillment of the 
promise of the Declaration of Independence was the sum of his 
political ambitions. 

The name of Jefferson will always be most closely associated 
with the immortal Declaration, but he who looks to the spirit and 
the thought behind the words, will find in the life and character 
of Abraham Lincoln the eternal truths of that document incarnate. 
From his earliest political utterances to the hour of his tragic 
death it was the beacon light by which he marked his course. He 
believed its sublime truths were eternal, everlasting, and applied 
to all people everywhere. To him it was the charter of human 
liberty born of the struggles of all time. In one of his speeches 
in his great contest with Stephen A. Douglas, perchance the 
greatest political debate in the history of the world, he said of the 
great Declaration and those who gave it to the world : 

"This was their majestic interpretation of the economy of the 
universe. This was their lofty and wise and noble understand- 
ing of the justice of the Creator to His creatures — yes, gentle- 
men, to all lli^ creatures, to the whole great family of man. 
* * * Think nothing of me, take no thought for the political 
Eat'e of any man whomsoever, but come back to the truths that 
are in the Declaration of Independence. You may do anything 
with me you choose, if you will but heed these sacred principles. 
Y<>u may not only defeat me for the Senate, but you may take 
me and put me to death. While pretending no indifference 
to earthly honors, I do claim to be actuated in this contest by 
something higher than an anxiety for office. I charge you to 
drop every paltry and insignificant thought for any man's suc- 
cess. It is nothing. I am nothing. Judge Douglas is noth- 
ing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, 
the Declaration of American Independence." 

And so through this great debate he would ever return to the 
great Declaration ; from the first speech at Springfield, where he 
took the divided house as his text, to the closing words at Alton, 
this champion of human liberty clung with increasing tenacity 
to the position which he had taken, that the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence gave expression to an abstract truth in announcing the 
liberty and equality of all men. At Chicago, quoting the words 



from the Declaration, "we hold these truths to be self-evident, 
that all men are created equal," he said : 

"That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the 
hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will 
link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists 
in the minds of men throughout the world." 

And so, after he was elected President, in his memorable 
trip from Springfield to Washington, again and again he planted 
himself upon the Declaration, and finally, in Old Independence 
Hall in Philadelphia, as he was nearing the capital and about 
to assume the gravest responsibilities ever laid upon an American 
president, he said : 

"All the political sentiments I entertain have been drawn, 
so far as I have been able to draw them, from the sentiments 
which originated in and were given to the world from this hall. 
I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from 
the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. 
I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by 
the men who were assembled here, and framed and adopted that 
Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over the toils 
that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who 
achieved that independence. I have often inquired of myself 
what great principle or idea it was that kept this confederacy 
so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation 
of the colonies from the mother land, but that sentiment in the 
Declaration of Independence which gave liberty, not alone to the 
people of this country, but hope to all the world for all future 
time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the 
weight would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that 
all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied 
in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this 
country be saved on that basis? If it can, I will consider myself 
one of the happiest men in the world if I can help save it. If it 
cannot be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But 
if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, 
I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot 
than surrender it." 

In all of this we may read without the possibility of error, 



Abraham Lincoln's message to the Twentieth Century. He 
w< >uld advise us to-night to plant ourselves squarely upon the 
great charter of our liberties and never to permit that one 
word or precept should be erased or surrendered that, in his 
words, "it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very 
harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression." But no 
interpretation of his message is required. It is found in those 
immortal words,— fitted to the conditions of all time, — which 
sprang from his lips as his saddened eyes looked out upon the 
caruage and desolation of Gettysburg: 

"It is for us. the living, rather to be dedicated here to the un- 
finished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly 
advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great 
task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take 
increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last 
full measure of devotion: that we here highly resolve that these 
dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, 
shall have a new r birth of freedom ; and that government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the 
earth." 

Contrary to his own modest statement, these words will 
live; live so long as Americans have pride in exalted pre-emi- 
nence ; live so long as eloquence occupies a place in the great 
accomplishments of man ; live so long as liberty has a votary in 
any land: live so long as patriotism is a virtue and tyranny a 
vice; live as a warning and a stimulus to renewed exertions in 
the noblest cause that commands the energy of man, until proud 
equality shall have gained complete and enduring mastery over 
the usurpation of the strong. The highest purpose, my country- 
men, which can go out from this meeting to-nigrk, is "that this 
nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom," that in 
the dawn of a new century the bright light of man's highest aims 
shall cast its rays far into the future. 

Tyranny and despotism are not the product, nor the concom- 
itant of any age. They know no clime or race; they speak, all 
languages, have flourished from the beginning and will flourish 
until vice and sin shall be no more. They are born of the union 
of selfishness and strength, and challenge to-day as they have 



through all the past, the vigilance and courage of mankind. Po- 
litical despotism is a thing of the past, let us hope that it is gone 
forever. Kings reign now in leniency and moderation, and the 
tendency in all governments is towards greater personal liberty 
for the citizens or the subject. The sun scarce shines upon a 
race of slaves; slavery, at least under the forms of law, no longer 
exist among civilized people. The banner of freedom has been 
carried farther and planted higher since the Declaration of In- 
dependence was given to the world than in all time before. 
While we may fecilitate ourselves upon this splendid progress, 
let us not thereby be lulled into the dangerous belief that the 
cause for which Lincoln labored and gave up his life is safe, 
that the banner of freedom is beyond the reach of the tyrant 
and the despot. Such a belief can have its source only in an 
imperfect understanding of present conditions. In the day of 
political despotism politics looked down upon commerce: even 
m the days of slavery the slave-holders, the landed gentry, looked 
upon the tradesmen as beneath them. Now all is different. The 
Twentieth Century dawns at the flood-tide of a commercial era. 
The great strong men of this age are engaged in commerce, not 
in politics, and from their vantage ground they look downward, 
not upward at the rest of mankind. The despotism, therefore, 
which threatens the present and the future, is commercial, not 
political; but if it should once become firmly fastened upon us, 
it will be more difficult to unhorse than any political despotism 
that ever bestrode the necks of men. For years it has been in- 
trenching itself behind the doctrine of vested rights, that salu- 
tary principle of our law so dear to the Anglo-Saxon race, and 
any attempt to overthrow it is easily made to seem a raid upon 
the foundations of society. Let us. however, not be confused. 
It is not legitimate commerce, nor the accumulation of wealth in 
itself, which constitutes this threatened danger. Commerce has 
been the hand-maid of religion and education in carrying the 
benefits of the highest civilization to the remotest parts of the 
earth. In our own country it has followed, and sometimes led, 
the missionary in his western march, subdued and reclaimed the 
wilderness and builded on it a splendid empire, fit monument to 
its genius and achievements. Under its inspiration the thirteen 



discordant colonies have become a mighty nation of world-wide 
influence and power which, from its unique position, stands to- 
day without a rival among- the nations of the earth. Nor yet is it 
against accumulated wealth that T would utter a word of warn- 
ing. All honor to the man who, by industry, energy and intel-' 
ligence has amassed a fortune. In the great majority of cases 
he has been the bone and sinew of the community where he has 
lived, and his success has been its success. Many such men 
leave the world far better for their efforts and with their ac- 
cumulated wealth do untold and incalculable good. He who 
arrays the poor against the rich, is a demagogue, and he who 
foresees ah impending conflict between capital and labor misun- 
derstand the functions and powers of these relative forces in the 
world's economy. Labor is the basis of all wealth, and wealth 
is the reward of honesl labor; together hand in hand they go, 
have g<me. and forever musl go in the world's work. 

I '.ut it is wealth accumulated and aggregated for the sake 
of power, which stands as a threatening menace to liberty and 
freedom of man; the lust for power, unlimited, arbitrary power, 
the same enemy man in his struggle for liberty has ever had to 
face. The confliel is not between capital and labor, between the 
rich and the poor, but it is the same old conflict between free- 
dom and oppression, between liberty and tyranny, between 
democracy and autocracy. By the charter of our liberties all 
political power is reposed in those over whom it is exercised. It 
may no more safely be intrusted to a corporation than to a king. 
Whatever power gains absolute control over those utilities which 
are man's prime necessities under the circumstances of the age 
in which he lives, becomes his master. In area the United 
States is an enormous empire; under the needs and require- 
ments of modern commerce, its remotest parts are brought near 
together by a system of transportation that is the crowning 
work of man's genius, and the management and conducting ol 
this system is the greatest industry which commands his ener- 
gies. Under present conditions this transportation system is as 
much a necessity as food or raiment. Eliminate it, and man 
drops at once to primitive conditions which would presage fur- 
ther retrogression. The transportation business stands, there- 



fore, first and at the head of the great utilities. Commercially 
speaking, the present has sometimes been called the Iron Age; 
certain it is that except for the use of this metal in its multiform 
varieties, the electric progress of the present must slacken to the 
movement of the Fifteenth Century; buildings now erected in 
a few months would require years for their construction; but 
for its use the business now done in a day could scarce be done in 
a decade, if at all. Prohibit man the use of iron and he could 
live, but it would be as the savage lives; commerce, progress, 
civilization would no longer be his part. Standing then second 
among these utilities is the production and manufacture of iron 
in all of its forms. Give one man absolute control of these two 
great industries, the transportation business and the iron busi- 
ness of the United States, and he can, by the most peaceful revo- 
lution, transform this splendid republic into the most absolute 
despotism that ever flourished upon the face of the earth. The 
men who make your laws will be his men. The men who admin- 
ister these laws will be his men. The men who collect your 
taxes and the men who spend the revenues, all will be men of 
his selecting, and the splendid heritage of American citizenship 
will descend to the level of the most abject subject or serf the 
world has ever known. It requires neither imagination nor 
genius to see this. The veriest dolt may understand it. If 
every mile you travel and every commodity you transport, you 
do it on the terms and at the time and in the manner one man 
shall name; if every particle of that most useful and necessary 
of all metals you use, you use only upon the terms, at the time 
and in the manner one man shall name, then that man's bene- 
ficence alone, stands between you and slavery or the return to 
primeval conditions. Centuries ago man learned that the 
beneficence of an autocrat was not a safe foundation for liberty, 
and out of that lesson grew the doctrine that "All government de- 
rives its just powers from the consent of the governed." 

But is this danger but a fantasy of the mind, a creation 
"proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain," or is it a sober, 
thoughtful, conservative conclusion visible in all the signs of the 
limes? If the control of these great industries by a single in- 
dividual or a small group of individuals, is a possibility, then all 



but the very innocent will appreciate the clanger. No believer 
in popular government would consider for one moment the sub- 
stitution of autocracy for the rule of the majority, however 
beneficent, however generous, however kindly that autocracy 
might be. The time for the consideration of that subject has 
long since gone by; representative democracy is firmly estab- 
lished in the minds of the American people as the ideal form of 
government. Whether the control of these great industries is a 
possiblity, depends upon the wisdom, patriotism and foresight 
of those who are intrusted with the discharge of public duty ; that 
such control is threatened, it is idle to deny ; to understand how 
it is threatened, is to at least be armed to resist it. 

The pursuit of wealth to the exclusion of higher purposes, 
undoubtedly destroys the foundation of our manhood. Francis 
Parkman. calm, conservative and most thoughtful among all of 
America's historians, has said that this great Republic is safe from 
every enemy except that most dangerous of all foes, herself, and 
declares that to permanently endure she must "rally her powers 
from the race for gold and the delirium of prosperity to make 
firm the foundations on which that prosperity rests, and turn 
some fair proportion of her vast mental forces to other objects 
than material progress." 

But, however much our national vitality may be undermined 
by the race for gold, I conceive it to be impossible that any single 
individual unaided by some artificial creation of the law, could 
gain control of these great industries or attain to any dangerous 
commercial supremacy. The clanger lies in the abuse of 
that creation of the law which we call a corporation. This ar- 
tificial creation has grown with our civilization ; its origin is 
shrouded in the mist of distant antiquity; we see it in the dim 
uawn of Roman history, and trace its growth and developmem; 
through the history of civilization. It has been the vehicle of 
modern progress, and is absolutely necessary in the commerce 
of to-day. But we must not lose sight of the fact that this ar- 
tificial person is not vested with all the rights or powers of the 
natural person. To so invest it makes it as dangerous as it is 
necessary. Many principles of the law which apply without lim- 
itation to natural persons, have salutary limitations when applied 



tl , tfiis artificial person, and as the ingenuity of man in the pur- 
suit of evil converts this- artificial creation of the law into an 
enoine of oppression and tyranny, its limitations must from time 
to tirtVe be re-established. Here, then, lies both the danger and 
the remedv The business of this day could no more be done 
without corporations than the bird could fly without wings; 
but in the economy of healthy commerce no useful purpose is 
served by such corporations as 'The United Metal Selling Com- 
pany " or the "Northern Securities Company." If the doctrine 
is to obtain that there are to be no restrictions placed upon cor- 
porations other than those placed upon natural persons, and that 
the principles of law and equity are to have the same application 
to these artificial creations that they have to men, in their indi- 
vidual transactions, our thralldom has already been accomplished. 
It is the insidious inculcation of this doctrine which lies at the 
foundation of and is responsible for the growth of the modern 
octopus we. with singular inappropriateness, call a trust. If cor- 
porations are to be chartered and protected whose sole purpose 
is to divert the earnings of other corporations; if corporations 
are to be chartered and protected whose sole purpose is to control 
other corporations and do those things which the law forbids 
those other corporations to do, and this multiplication of corpora- 
tions within corporations is to be permitted indefinitely, then it 
is easy to see how the great industries of this country may be 
brought under a single control, and our boasted liberty become a 
by- word and a mocker}-. 

But such things shall not be. There is a remedy, and it 
will eventually be applied. It is not. in my judgment, along the 
line of state control ; this is wise, but it presents so many difficul- 
ties as 1. 1 be ineffective. As to publicity, if that were a sufficient 
remedy the disease would be already cured, for we know all 
that it is possible to ascertain as to the workings of these giant cor- 
porations. No; the remedy must be applied to the root of the 
evil Lecky tells us in his History of European Morals, that 
there was no principle in the Roman imperial policy more stub- 
bornly upheld than the suppression of all corporations that might 
be made the nuclei of revolt. Every form of government Worthy 
to exist arrests in its instpiency anything which tends to the 



overthrow of the fundamental principle upon which that gov- 
ernment rests. The foundation of imperial government is obe- 
dience to the mandates of the imperial power; revolt of the peo- 
ple is the one danger in which such a government constantly 
stands. Representative democracy is in no danger from revolt; 
its foundation is the rule of the majority, and anything which 
tends toward the development of an irresponsible autocracy is 
the greatest danger which could threaten this fundamental tenet. 
If, therefore, we are as wise as Rome was 2000 years ago, we 
will see to it that our laws both in their enactment and their en- 
forcement suppress such corporations as might be used to bring 
under one control the great industries and thereby establish 
upon the ruins of democracy a commercial despotism. It is not 
always necessary to rush to the legislature for a remedy ; the en- 
tire body of our laws, state and national, relative to both public 
and private corporations, might well he revised and fundamental 
changes made in the light of modern development^ ; but the 
foundations of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence have been so wisely 
laid that the remedy which we seek, 1 verily believe, may be 
found in an honest, vigilant and intelligent administration of 
existing laws. \ careful study of the decisions of the courts, 
both state and federal, will indicate the way, and 1 have no hesi- 
tancy in asserting here to-night that if the power of the execu- 
tive department of state and national governments shall be in- 
telligent lv and courageously exerted in the enforcement of exist- 
ing laws, the modern trust will be destroyed and the dangers 
of commercial despotism averted. In his dissenting opinion in 
the Trans-Missouri Freight Association case, Judge Oliver P. 
Shiras. of low a, said : 

"In my judgment, the right to insist upon free competition 
between railway companies engaged in carrying interstate com- 
merce, is a right which belongs to the public, of which it cannot 
be dq^rived except by its own consent, and every contrarc or 
combination between these public corporations which tends to 
remove the business carried on by them from the influence of 
free competition tends to deprive the public of this right." 

Upon the appeal of this case to the United States Supreme 
Court, this view was adopted, and the learned Iowa jurist re- 



ceived in the opinion one of the highest compliments ever paid to 
a judge of an inferior court by that great tribunal. If this right 
of free competition belongs to the people, it belongs to them by 
virtue of the fundamental principle of the form of government 
which the people have adopted, by virtue of that principle which 
in the great declaration is stated as an abstract truth — a principle 
in morals — inhering in all people everywhere. Competition is the 
only commercial governor the wit of man has yet devised ; its de- 
struction means commercial autocracy, and is in defiance of 
this principle; every corporation, therefore, which is created for 
that purpose or used to that end, becomes a conspiracy against 
the fundamental principle which underlies the Republic, is un- 
lawful, and can be destroyed. 

But out from this threatening danger, my countrymen, as 
from all the dangers of the past, this Republic will come puri- 
fied as by fire. The prophesy of Isaiah will be fulfilled, "I will 
make a man more precious than fine gold ; even a man. than the 
golden wedge of Ophir * * * And Babylon, the glory of king- 
doms; the beauty of Chaldees' excellency shall be as when 
God overthrew Sodom and Gomorah." 

The instrument of that splendid work will be that political 
party which sprang into being to redeem the promise of the 
Declaration of Independence, and which has stood for nearly 
fifty years the exponent of man's highest political ideals. It is 
to the Republican party that all must look for rescue from this 
present danger. Our government is essentially one of parties; 
it is only through that concert of action which we secure through 
political parties, that anything can be accomplished. Since the 
decline of the old Federalist party, the Republican party is the 
only political organization that has shown the virility, the cour- 
age and the intelligence to grapple with great national dangers. 
It is essentially the party of the people; the guardian of human 
liberty and the champion of human rights, and to it in time of 
national peril the people may turn with absolute confidence that 
their interest will be protected, their rights re-asserted and their 
liberties guarded. The dangers of commercial despotism exist 
in violation of every principle of the Republican party, and by it 
will be met and overcome. The Republican party! The party 



of Lincoln and of Grant, of Hayes and of Garfield, of Arthur and 
of Blaine, of Harrison and of McKinley, the silent dead who 
look down upon us to-night; the party, too, of him, the living, 
who, with lofty purpose, is to-day fulfilling the solemn trust so 
sadly imposed upon him. / -TJ^Repj*hl£Ciu/&*arty ! the party that 
saved the nation from disamonj^Hra plaipJa^rhigh in the skies, 
there forever to float the starry emblem of the free; that gave 
freedom, hope, and courage to four millions of God's creatures, 
and which, so long as it is worthy of its past, will protect and 
defend them. The Republican party! the party of confidence 
and of progress ; the party that has restored and maintained na- 
tional credit, driven poverty from the doors of the people, re- 
turned prosperity to every section of this broad land, and sent 
the blessings of free institutions across the sea, — a party rich in tmm*. 
heritage of great achievements, but richer far in high-born pur- 
pose and firm resolve for the duty before it. to see "that this na- 
tion, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that 
gn >\ eminent of the people, by the people, and for the people 
shall not perish from the earth." 



1903 



